


To The Bone

by laureltreedaphne



Category: Igby Goes Down (2002)
Genre: Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laureltreedaphne/pseuds/laureltreedaphne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Oliver finds him, California has already imprinted itself on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Migrating fic over from LiveJournal - this is from 2003. Written in 50 minutes for the contrelamontre show-not-tell heat and cold challenge.

By the time Oliver finds him, California has already imprinted itself on his skin. The pale, porcelain perfect flesh that he's had all his life, one of the only traits they ever shared, is gone, replaced by a golden brown tan so glowing and stereotypical that for a moment Oliver wonders if he's not just projecting his brother onto someone else. He's always had freckles, but now it seems as if there are more of them, splattered across the bridge of his nose, curled across his cheekbones. He's still every inch the rebellious upper-crust child, with his boarding school hair and disheveled clothing; but now he's traded in his overcoats and scarves for fraying shorts and threadbare t-shirts. 

"I went to see Dad," he says when they get back to his apartment, and Oliver wants to say _he's not your dad_ wants to say _you're not destined for a breakdown anymore, you don't have to be this way_. Instead he looks around the shit-hole apartment, takes in the details, listens to the fan whirring in the corner while the light flickers overhead. A bead of sweat forms on Igby's temple and Oliver watches as it tracks a path down along his face, over the shocks of freckles to stop and hang on his upper lip. He flicks it away with an impatient finger, asks, "Funeral all right?" 

"You were there," Oliver answers, "you know." 

They don't drink out of bottles, that's not the way they were brought up, so when he pours Oliver a scotch he takes his time, breaks lopsided cubes out of the faded blue ice tray and drops them into the chipped glass he retrieves from a cabinet. Condensation forms on the outside almost immediately, drips down over his fingers and pools in the creases of his knuckles. Oliver watches him, listens to the ice clink in the glass as he hands it over, sees the condensation evaporate as their fingers brush. "So what have you been doing here?" he asks, taking a sip of the scotch, and while it's not quite as good as what he's used to, it still burns pleasantly as it pushes its way down his chest. 

"Living," he answers.

"Good," Oliver says. "That's good."

When they touch, he leaves sticky red handprints on Oliver's skin. His hands cling to him and don't move smoothly down his body the way they should, they catch against the smooth skin of his stomach, the perfect skin of his arm. His hair lays plastered against his forehead, falls in his eyes, but he doesn't bother to shake it away. Underneath the layer of golden brown he flushes, lets himself turn a dull red, while Oliver finds the parts of his body that are still pale the way they should be. When his breath leaves a scalding path of awareness against Oliver's neck Oliver feels something inside of him break, beneath his pale flesh he feels the blood start to move in his veins. 

**

Oliver's unfailingly gentle, and Igby thinks it's odd, that he would pick this time to finally be a protective older brother. His hands leave trails of frostbite against his skin, and Igby can't see but he knows his skin must be slowly taking on a bluish tinge. It's true, so true, what he told Sookie, and he doesn't know why this is happening, if it's about Mimi, or them, or if it's about something else entirely. When Oliver's breath brushes across his stomach he feels his flesh prickle and rise, Oliver laughs and smoothes his hands over the goose bumps. He shivers when he comes, huge, body wracking shivers, and Oliver whispers incomprehensible words as he burns above him. 

In the morning Oliver is gone, of course. Igby isn't surprised and doesn't really care. Next to him, there's no imprint in the bed, no sign that a living body spent the night pressed into the sheets. There's a check on the chair beside the bed for $3000, he doesn't know if the money's from Oliver or D.H., doesn't really take the time to think about it, because in the end it means the same thing either way. 

Outside, the sky is gray, there's obviously a storm coming in over the water. His t-shirt's suddenly too thin now, and the fan's circulating the air around the tiny room and making things worse, but he doesn't bother to shut it off. Even in California, he has gray days.


End file.
